Hidden Chicano Cinema: Film Dramas in the Borderlands

289 Pages·2013·4.638 MB·English

by  A Gabriel Melendez

Hidden Chicano Cinema
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Latinidad
Transnational Cultures in the United States
This series publishes books that deepen and expand our knowledge and
understanding of the various Latina/o populations in the United States
in the context of their transnational relationships with cultures of the
broader Americas. The focus is on the history and analysis of Latino cul-
tural systems and practices in national and transnational spheres of influ-
ence from the nineteenth century to the present. The series is open to
scholarship in political science, economics, anthropology, linguistics, his-
tory, cinema and television, literary and cultural studies, and popular cul-
ture and encourages interdisciplinary approaches, methods, and theories.
The series grew out of discussions with faculty at the School of Transborder
Studies at Arizona State University, where an interdisciplinary emphasis is
being placed on transborder and transnational dynamics.
Carlos Velez- Ibañez, Series Editor, School of Transborder Studies
Rodolfo F. Acuña, In the Trenches of Academe: The Making of Chicana/o Studies
Adriana Cruz- Manjarrez, Zapotecs on the Move: Cultural, Social, and Political
Processes in Transnational Perspective
Marivel T. Danielson, Homecoming Queers: Desire and Difference in Chicana
Latina Cultural Production
Rudy P. Guevarra Jr., Becoming Mexipino: Multiethnic Identities and Communi-
ties in San Diego
Lisa Jarvinen, The Rise of Spanish-L anguage Filmmaking: Out from Hollywood’s
Shadow, 1929– 1939
Regina M. Marchi, Day of the Dead in the USA: The Migration and Transforma-
tion of a Cultural Phenomenon
Marci R. McMahon, Domestic Negotiations: Gender, Nation, and Self- Fashioning
in U.S. Mexicana and Chicana Literature and Art
A. Gabriel Meléndez, Hidden Chicano Cinema: Film Dramas in the Borderlands
Priscilla Peña Ovalle, Dance and the Hollywood Latina: Race, Sex, and Stardom
Luis F. B. Plascencia, Disenchanting Citizenship: Mexican Migrants and the
Boundaries of Belonging
Maya Socolovsky, Troubling Nationhood in U.S. Latina Literature: Explorations
of Place and Belonging
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Hidden Chicano Cinema
Film Dramas in the Borderlands
A. GABriel MelénDez
rutGers university Press
new BrunswiCk, new Jersey, AnD lonDon
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liBrAry oF ConGress CAtAloGinG- in- PuBliCAtion DAtA
Meléndez, A. Gabriel (Anthony Gabriel).
Hidden Chicano cinema : film dramas in the borderlands / A. Gabriel
Meléndez.
pages cm. — (Latinidad: transnational cultures in the United States)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978– 0– 8135– 6107– 3 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978– 0– 8135– 6106– 6
(pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978– 0– 8135– 6108– 0 (e- book) (print)
1. Mexican Americans in motion pictures. 2. Mexican-A merican Border
Region— In motion pictures. I. Title.
PN1995.9.M49M46 2013
791.43’65296872073— dc23 2012038528
A British Cataloging-i n- Publication record for this book is available
from the British Library.
Copyright © 2013 by A. Gabriel Meléndez
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, with-
out written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press,
106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibi-
tion is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law.
Visit our website: http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu
Manufactured in the United States of America
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Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments vii
1 Borderlands Cinema and the Proxemics of Hidden and
Manifest Film encounters 1
2 ill will Hunting (Penitentes) 31
3 A lie Halfway around the world 53
4 lives and Faces Plying through exotica 81
5 Red Sky at Morning, a Borderlands interlude 113
6 the king tiger Awakens the sleeping Giant
of the southwest 146
7 Filming Bernalillo: Post–C ivil rights Chicano Film subjects 187
8 toward a new Proxemics: Historical, Mythopoetic, and
Autoethnographic works 216
Conclusion 242
Notes 247
Bibliography 257
Index 265
v
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PreFACe AnD ACknowleDGMents
H
idden Chicano Cinema addresses a series of “film moments” that are at
once a set of cultural encounters between filmmakers, film as a technol-
ogy, and the people of the communities that became the subjects for vari-
ous film depictions. Thus, the “film drama” I reference in the subtitle also
refers to “the drama of filmmaking,” something which is as much about
what happens onscreen and as what happens offscreen. Like first impres-
sions, these film encounters often found Borderlands residents and film-
makers eyeing each other from opposite sides of the camera lens. Vexed by
mutual scrutiny and laden with the distrust and tension, these moments
surged with dramatic intensity kindled by the politics and poetics of
“shooting” the Southwest.
The book is composed of eight chapters. The first three concern them-
selves with the advent of still photography and early film in New Mexico
during a period when the most impermeable lines of misunderstanding
mark the earliest encounters of Borderlands residents with the camera.
The inverse is also true, as these chapters also account for the awe photog-
raphers and filmmakers experienced in their determination to film what
they considered a “foreign locale” within the boundaries of the United
States. Chapters 4 and 5 center on representations of Chicanos in the
United States during the Cold War period, a time when older representa-
tions gave way to images invested with a greater degree of sociological real-
ism. In chapters 6, 7, and 8, I look at several film encounters produced after
the filmic turn in which Chicano/as took hold of the camera and returned
their own gaze, giving expression to their creative voices as documentar-
ians and filmmakers. As I argue in the final chapters, in doing so, emergent
vii
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viii PreFACe AnD ACknowleDGMents
filmmakers have changed the nature of the more recent film moments and
encounters.
I have come to learn that it is far easier to start a book on film than it
is to bring it to a close— starting one might be as simple as going to the
movies. As I write this, I have just become aware that the highest- selling
and most widely known Chicano novel, Bless Me, Ultima, written by New
Mexico native Rudolfo Anaya, has been turned into a film. I have seen
the YouTube trailer, and premieres of the film are being planned for El
Paso and Santa Fe. Without a doubt, if there ever were a film to include
in my study, this would be the one. Following from my assertions about
the nature of Borderlands film encounters, the screen version of Bless Me,
Ultima is ripe for analysis. I can only hope that readers of my book will
screen the film with eyes more fully attuned to the history that precedes
it. For now, it must stand as the stellar example of just how difficult it is
to close a book on film. But knowing that Bless Me, Ultima is now a film is
a reward of its own, as I am assured that Borderlands narratives will con-
tinue to show up on the radar of filmmakers and film audiences, many
of whom will want to know more about the “distant locale” depicted by
recent and older films.
At times it’s clear to me that this book really began with my earliest
visits to the movies. It was a time when as far as I knew everyone referred
to motion pictures as movies, never “films.” I have a distant and vague
recall of my parents taking me to see whatever new blockbusters made it
to the Serf Theatre in Las Vegas, New Mexico, in the early 1960s. I remem-
ber seeing The Ten Commandments, Ben Hur, Giant, and a huge number of
charro movies featuring Antonio Aguilar and Flor Sylvester, the Roy Rog-
ers and Dale Evans of the Mexican screen. Despite this exposure to the
blockbuster, I didn’t choose to write a book about biblical Hollywood or
about life in México—t hough surely these subjects made an impression
on me. I find it a matter of continuing interest that I did take up the sub-
ject of Chicano/a portrayals on film, a point that turns me back to George
Stevens’s widescreen epic Giant (1956). What I remember about Giant is
stepping out of a stuffy movie theater, walking down the sidewalk beside
my parents, and having the vague feeling that I had just witnessed see-
ing some part of us— my parents, my neighbors, and my relatives— up on
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PreFACe AnD ACknowleDGMents ix
the screen. I wasn’t connecting with Leslie Lynnton (Elizabeth Taylor), Bick
Benedict (Rock Hudson), or Jett Rink (James Dean). The sensation I felt was
rather from some yet unclear identification with the brown-s kinned ranch
people, the hired folk and the Mexican American neighbors that populated
key scenes of the Texas ranch country in Giant. As best I recall, their speech
and attitude reminded me of family and neighbors. Lacking the ability to
analyze in any meaningful way what I had just seen, I carried out small bits
of emotion onto the streets of our little one-t heater town. In some sense, I
have continued to search for other “third eye” film moments (to use Fati-
mah Rony’s term) and to probe this question: What do the representations
of Mexican Americans onscreen have to do with me and my community? In
keeping with this starting point, my list of acknowledgments would have
to begin with my parents, Santos and Adela V. Meléndez (both deceased),
who both liked and distrusted the movies and gave me a healthy skepti-
cism of popular culture. In addition, the actual writing of Hidden Chicano
Cinema requires mention of a number of friends, colleagues, and family
members who, knowingly or not, have helped this book take shape.
A good portion of the research for this book happened over the course
of my most recent sabbatical leave. I am thankful to the Department of
American Studies and the College of Arts and Sciences at the University
of New Mexico for allowing me to take time away from the classroom for
this project. Much of the credit for the book is owed to the Center for
Regional Studies and its director, Dr. Tobías Durán. CRS provided me with
a major research grant that made it possible for me to take an extended
sabbatical in the first place. It was during this phase of research that I
identified most of the early films and encounter stories that helped me to
develop the methodological foundations of the study. I also was fortunate
to have been able to attend the Memoria, Voz y Patrimonio conference on
Latino/Hispanic Film, Print, and Sound Archives at UCLA, where I received
enormous encouragement from the Chicano Studies Research Center and
from its director, Chon A. Noriega. The late Yolanda Ritter (1947–2 007),
archivist and chief research librarian at CSRC, was a consummate profes-
sional who steered me straightaway to some of the most difficult-t o- locate
film sources. Over a period of several months I conducted interviews with
numerous filmmakers and with participants in some of the films I discuss
here. I wish to thank Gabriel Chávez, Moctesuma Esparza, Danny Lyon,
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